Wednesday, April 1, 2009

It was the afternoon before our return flight to Manila.We werealready on our way back to the hotel when this double-breasted chocolate brown plaid linen dress displayed in one of the clothes stalls caught my attention.At last I found a dress I like, I thought to myself.Since the store doesn’t take credit cards, D and I counted our remaining baht. We had to think twice: If we’d buy the dress, we will only have eight baht (approximately 22 cents or 11 pesos) left.With the belief that it would be gone if we just return for it and the assumption that it would be easy to go to the nearest currency exchange to get us more baht, we decided to buy the dress.We assumed wrong. Not a single bank was open for business (we forgot it was a Sunday) and there weren’t any establishment nearby that offers currency exchange.

With our remaining eight baht, we couldn’t afford the boat ride back to the hotel. We couldn’t even afford a tuktuk ride!We couldn’t even afford a bottle of water! We had to walk a considerable distance back to the hotel - exactly two piers away!Terribly exhausted when we arrived, we still couldn’t help but laugh ourselves crazy for that afternoon’s misadventure.And what made it crazier was when we discovered that D developed a blister from all the walking that we did. Until now, he blames my dress for it.